GOVERNMENTS AROUND THE WORLD WEIGH THORNY QUESTION: WHO GETS THE VACCINE FIRST?

Different countries are coming up with different answers to that question.

UNITED STATES

The U.S. federal government’s world-leading “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine program plans to distribute 6.4 million doses of a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine within 24 hours of regulatory clearance. But even this initial effort to immunize front-line health-care workers risks wasted doses, and that’s just Step 1, in one country.

Government officials say it will be April before most people could get vaccinated. A government Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is prepared to issue its prioritization guidance Dec. 10. But HHS Secretary Alex Azar said this week the federal government won’t wait for ACIP recommendations if a vaccine is authorized before then.

CANADA

Canada is taking into account public opinion preferences in its strategy, which suggests “Canadians prioritize those with underlying medical conditions and the elderly,” and also treating “household contacts of those at high-risk of severe illness and death” as potential priorities. The defense department is buying freezers to “store and transport” Covid-19 vaccines for its “military population.”

EUROPEAN UNION

Xavier Bettel, prime minister of Luxembourg, said in an interview that the EU has a difficult starting position when it comes to Covid-19 vaccinations: “There is not one country where over 60 percent of people want to get vaccinated.”

However, a tug-of-war between Brussels-based EU institutions and national governments over how to source and deliver vaccines appears to have ended happily: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed this week that the EU has secured vaccines for 430 million people — enough for virtually every EU resident. It would have created a “nightmare” if the EU failed to coordinate distribution, Bettel said.

Among a series of priority measures, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said it will deploy the vaccine to “control active outbreaks.”

Germany’s Standing Committee on Vaccination recommends that prioritization be guided by “urgency of preventive health protection,” aiming to reduce cases most likely to lead to hospitalization or death, and to ensure “maintenance of essential state functions and public life,” which includes police, firefighters and teachers, in addition to healthcare workers.

UNITED KINGDOM

The U.K.’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has an 11-step order of priority. After healthcare workers, the priorities are older adults in care homes, then older Britons, starting with the eldest and descending in 5-year age brackets.

JAPAN

Japan’s top priority is older citizens with chronic conditions. Citizens will be issued coupons indicating their order of priority, Japan’s Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said.

INDIA

Class and geographic divides have produced significant variations in India’s death rates. 80-year-olds in some states are surviving more often than 60-year-olds in others, University of Chicago Professor Anup Malani writes on behalf of The Indian Covid Alliance. The government’s response: set a lower age threshold than most Western countries — 50 years — for priority access.

Source: Politico